In the packaging of cigarettes, cigarette groups each assigned to a pack are conventionally first composed of several rows formed in a specific way. In a particularly popular pack design, the two outer rows each consist of seven cigarettes and an inner or middle row located between them consists of six cigarettes. These are disposed offset, namely in a "saddle arrangement", relative to the cigarettes of the outer rows.
The formation of the cigarette groups assigned to a pack presents special technical difficulties when, on the one hand, the cigarettes are to be treated carefully in the requisite manner, but, on the other hand, in view of the high productivity of packaging machines the cigarette groups are to be formed within short cycle times. The invention is concerned with this subject in the widest sense.
The object on which the invention is based is to speed up by means of process-related and apparatus-related measures the production of cigarette groups during the packaging thereof, while also guaranteeing careful treatment of the cigarettes.
To achieve this object, the process according to the invention is characterised in that rows of cigarettes, each corresponding to a row of the cigarette group, are extracted successively in space and time in the direction of movement of the continuous sequence supplied, and after intermediate arrangement are joined together to form a group by being deposited successively in time.
The process according to the invention permits, above all, continuous progress of the working steps, so that the devices and units participating can be driven predominantly continuously. This results fundamentally in a considerable increase in performance without damage to the cigarettes.